Located in the middle of nowhere, west of the Great Salt Lake on the Utah/Nevada border, the vast salt flats of Bonneville cover some 150 square miles. Since the 1930s, Bonneville’s broad, hard, flat and unobstructed surface has made it a mecca for efforts to set ever-faster land speed records. The earliest speed records were set at Daytona Beach, Florida (see page 424), but as top speeds increased, racers needed more room to maneuver safely. In 1931, Ab Jenkins set Bonneville’s first world record in his bright red Mormon Meteor, and racers have converged on Bonneville’s 10-mile-long drag strip in pursuit of record-breaking speed ever since.

  Craig Breedlove, in his car “Spirit of America,” was the first to exceed the 400, 500, and 600 mph marks, but in recent years, problems with water dissolving the salt have made Bonneville less than ideal, so racers like Richard Noble, whose team set the current record of 763 mph in 1996, have opted for the Black Rock Desert, 150 miles north of Reno, Nevada. Still, every summer hundreds of thrill-seekers descend on Bonneville, racing their hot rods in a series of time trials.